The Soup

What a day! Already! This is a better day than I usually have by 9 AM. I woke up when Bob's alarm went off at 6 AM. He was already out of bed and downstairs. I discovered that my own clock was two minutes slow, so I fixed that.

I cannot remember what the first few things were that I did today, but by the time Bob left at 7 something (driving the car in to work today instead of taking the Stagecoach because he is going to the temple with the youth tonight) I had decided to use up all the vegetables that we received from our CSA share yesterday, and the leftovers from last week as well, and turn them into a soup. A soup that I may share with Jonathan and Alissa and the boys tomorrow! Watch out, Kids!!!

This is the recipe:

Chop a bunch of leeks, a bunch of shallots, and two heads (yes, heads) of garlic and saute for a while in 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon canola oil. Not really saute because I put the cover on so it was more a "steam/saute" with the fat just for flavoring. Next chop up a bunch of new carrots and throw into the large pot in which you sauteed the previous vegetables. Pour in a quart of free-range chicken broth from friend Trader Joe. Scrub and throw in a couple handfuls of red potatoes and a couple handfuls of fingerling potatoes...the larger ones having been cut in half.

Now chop up a good-sized yellow summer squash and throw in. Be sure to stir every so often, even though the burner is set on pretty low. Remove the blossom and stem end from two smallish delicata winter squashes; cut down the middle and scoop out the seeds and pith, then slice into quarter-inch pieces and toss in, skin and all. By this time the pot is looking rather full of stuff and not much liquid so add another quart of the chicken broth.

Finally, (at least finally to this point....soup isn't done yet!) chop up a bunch of dried kale leaves, a bunch of beet greens, a bunch of turnip greens, and a bunch of fresh basil. Once these greens are chopped/sliced set them aside and take the 2-pound boneless mini pork roast out of the freezer, remove from the pink styrofoam pan and nasty, sticky white plastic protector sheets, being sure to hack the bits of pink styrofoam off the pork roast where they stuck. Be careful not to hack off the part of your two fingers which froze onto the pork roast as you were removing the roast from the nasty white plastic protective sheets then plop the nice pork roast on top of the potatoes and other vegetables in the pot. On top of the pork roast toss in all the chopped greens and put the cover on. Look around the kitchen and in the refrigerator for other uneaten-and-likely-to-go-bad vegetables (hold the fruits this time....) and get ready to add them to the pot as the other things sink down into oblivion in the whole mess. Certainly you will have a few part-bags of spicy salad greens from previous CSA offerings, and who knows what all else. Let cook on low for several hours, checking every now and then to see what is going on in the pot. Probably DON'T chop up the beets from last week's CSA and throw them in. Beets may be pretty, but....they make me a little squeemish.

Then there was the genealogy issue. I glanced at one email from the LDS-FH-CONSULTANT list where there were several messages about Ohana Software's new Family Insight which is their version of PAF Insight which will work with the new FamilySearch, or FamilySearch family tree as it is now being called. I downloaded the Family Insight, installed it and got ready to roll with it but found that my MacBook using Parallels and the Windows software where my PAF resides had some sort of issue with connecting to the internet (it has to do with firewalls and I could not figure out a way to take down the firewall for this software, or any software for that matter)...so I wrote a feedback message to Ohana about a problem I found when I started reading their help center's Getting Started with Family Insight. As soon as I sent the emailed feedback I went back to the Ohana website and noticed that I was supposed to restart my computer after installing Family Insight. Whoops! So I did that, but still received the same error message. Now I think I will have to wait until tomorrow and chat with Jonathan about that, and other, computer issues. I hate to wear him out with my brain wave problems, though.

Also, before the soup project I had had a major kitchen cleaning project, including washing the platter on which was formerly a delicious carrot cake which Alissa made for Bob to thank him for sending her some Wigwam socks. I am not sure who got the better deal there! The cake sure was good.

So, all this by 9 AM on a Friday! I think I will turn this email into a blog entry and feel like I have really accomplished something today. Oh! I can smell the soup! That is such a good sign. Well, I can smell the beets, too, and hope I remember I was going to hold off on adding them to the soup!

Perhaps there will be an addendum to the soup project, besides the fact that I have now put it into the oven for the long-haul cooking. I feel that way it is less likely to burn. We shall see.